


say you won't let go here

by b00mgh



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, F/M, First Meetings, actually everyone is sorta ooc, cause that show has character depth of a blow up kiddy pool, friends first, haha - Freeform, i think i'm slick, ooc sage, this came to me in a dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 20:46:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15693081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: They meet at a party, never get each other's names, and Clarice's drink gets drugged. John takes her home and then witnesses her kidnapping by some agency of the US government. And, I mean, of course, he's got to go after her.





	say you won't let go here

They meet at a party.  
John didn’t even want to be at this party– he had an early shift at work the next day, and this would undoubtedly keep him up past at least one in the morning, if it was a short party– but Marcos and Lorna ambushed him at his house and dragged him along like a drug dealer to a police station. Ironic, seeing as they were the ones high off their asses.  
It’s not that John hates parties… except, yeah, it’s pretty much that John hates parties. The noise hurt his ears, and when people used those goddamned strobe lights he always felt like vomiting. He was fully aware that Marcos and Lorna were trying to be nice, get him a social life outside them (never mind that he introduced them in the first place), but John always ended up standing outside whoever’s house was being destroyed, as far from the commotion as he could get. He didn’t hate being around people, these just weren’t his people.  
Clarice, on the other hand, pretty much hated being around people. She came to parties because she needed somewhere to go so that her mom wouldn’t keep asking about the friends she may or may not have, and nobody asked who you were at a party unless it was some sleazy guy who wanted your number as the gate key to your pant’s zipper.  
There wasn’t a lot of fun to be had in drinking or dancing by yourself, and god forbid one of these glib, loudmouthed idiots try and talk to her; she just wanted to show up and hide away and soak in the echoes of noises that would probably shatter her eardrums if she got any closer. In the end, Clarice would always pretty much just stand in the backyard and hum along to the blasting music and try to look occupied until she could go home at something like midnight.  
The two of them, John and Clarice, had probably been at the same party at the same time before, but they’d never met. Probably never even saw each other. However, this night was different because John was backing away from Marcos and Lorna– they were trying to get him to go dance with some plastered girl they’d made friends with by the bathroom– and he tripped over a lawn gnome and fell flat on his ass about three inches from the log Clarice had taken up her residence on at the edge of the yard.  
“Look, I’ll sit with her, you guys go dance with that girl,” John pleads– pleads with Marcos and Lorna to go, pleads with this girl he’s never met to go along with this, pleads with any gods that do or don’t exist to give him an opportunity to get the heck out of here.  
Marcos looks like he’s about to protest, but Lorna gasps widely, laughs highly, and drags her boyfriend back towards the throng of people in the house. “Sonia’s waiting,” she whines at him. John stares after her, wondering at how much a few grams of weed can change a personality.  
“Having fun?” Clarice smirks at him– she’s trying not to laugh, because he is still pretty much laying down in the dirt, and he doesn’t seem like he wants to get up.  
“Oh, yeah,” he groans, and then takes, like half a look at her and sits straight up, “O-Oh, yeah,” he echoes, but the tone is different.  
Clarice chuckles, sips her shitty red-solo-cup alcohol (a mix some boy handed her as she walked through the door– she isn’t sure she likes it, but she doesn’t frequent the drink tables at these parties, so who is she to talk about taste). She’s starting to get tipsy off of it, and she’ll blame that for her chuckle, at her even talking to this boy at all, it’s certainly not the fact that he’s more ripped than her Halloween fishnets, because it would be shallow of her to give preferential conversational treatment based on appearance alone. Except what was it her mom said about cute boys and pretty girls? Something. Her mom had definitely told her something about cute boys and pretty girls, but Clarice can’t immediately recall it. Anyway, she’s started this conversation, now it’s time to end it. “Why don’t you go dance with that girl?” she asks, maybe a little more flatly, more superficially, than she intended.  
John’s eyes, bright with embarrassment and attention moments ago, shutter, and he shrugs. Superficial, flat. “I’m not one for dancing and drinking.”  
“Everybody likes dancing and drinking,” Clarice insists. Her eyes, which are strikingly green and which convince John that she’s wearing colored contacts, search him. Not deeply, but in a way that feels like a fish biting at a baited hook.  
Feeling the heat drop away from his ears, John corrects, “I’m the designated driver, and the noises and lights mess with my head.” He’s never really told anyone that last bit, feels childish to tell people that he can’t handle his surroundings, he supposes, but it feels like a weight off his chest to tell this random stranger. Why? He was sure his grandpa had told him something like that at some point– what was it again?  
“It’s easier to tell them things,” Clarice whispers.  
“Right, that was it,” John realizes, smiling a little because she’d known what he was talking about, even if he hadn’t realized he’d been speaking aloud.  
“That was what?” Clarice doesn’t seem to realize she had been speaking aloud either. It leaves John a little confused as to how she had finished his sentence that he had not said aloud, but whatever. On the other hand, whatever is in Clarice’s solo cup must be strong, because she laughs and says “Mom said that one time: ‘It’s easier to tell things to cute boys and pretty girls,’ she said.” Taking another giggly sip, she whispers “That’s why I can talk to you, kid.” She goes for a wink, but it looks like a blink.  
Now the heat is back in John’s ears, “Oh,” he mutters.  
“I don’t like parties,” Clarice whines, “I don’t like this party.” Her eyes are dark and stormy and clouded. John gets the impression that this expression is more typical for her, and wonders at how much a few ounces of alcohol can change a personality.  
Something feels off though. It’s nothing John can put his finger on or tell somebody, but he grabs the red solo cup from the girl (he still doesn’t know her name, just like she doesn’t know his, they missed the whole introduction part), and says “I’ll be right back,” and goes inside to find Lorna.  
She’d be harder to miss since she and Marcos are elbow-deep in each other right by the sliding glass door to the backyard. Clearing his throat pointedly, and then just tapping Lorna on the shoulder, he asks “Hey, Lorna, you still got that cool nail polish?” Lorna never leaves the house without her signature green-black nail polish, a color that Marcos buys her in bulk for every birthday, and it’s for good reason: the nail polish changes color when dipped it into a drugged drink.  
Lorna laughs loudly, something she’d never do sober, and hands him her extended middle finger, at which John rolls his eyes and shoves it in the ¼ full cup. Green rapidly waxes a purpley, bruised red, then fades back to green when Lorna takes her finger back. What’s red again? There was a way to remember it… ‘Yellow-green for GHB, Pink for Ketamine, Red-violet for Rohypnol.’ Rohypnol.  
Shiiiittt.  
“Hey, guys, I gotta go home early,” John tells his first and second wheels, “call an Uber, okay? And don’t take any drinks that people hand you, unless they’re–”  
“Unless they’re unopened bottles,” Lorna imitates, “yeah, we got it, Mother Hen, now go get some ass.”  
Marcos waves animatedly, “Have fun for once, John,” he grins and then wraps his arms around his girlfriend to continue where John oh-so-rudely interrupted.  
Scoffing, making his way to the log where he’d been before, Clarice is now swaying in the zephyrs of air that snake their way through the trees. “I don’t like this party,” she tells him when he gets close, “I feel–… I feel bad. On the inside.”  
To himself, John is thinking ‘I bet you do,’ but out loud he just asks her “You want to go home?” and she nods and stands and trips on nothing and sits back down.  
“I don’t like this party,” she reiterates, like this isn’t the third time she’s said it. To be fair, John hates this party too, and he’s not the one with nausea and motor control issues.  
Trying for a smile, but falling short at a sympathetic grimace, John mutters “Let’s get you home then,” and he offers her a hand to help her stand this time.  
“I won’t fall?” she clarifies suspiciously. “Like last time?” It doesn’t feel like she’s asking about a few seconds ago, either.  
“Nope,” John assures her, “I’ll catch you, don’t worry about it.” Clarice still seems dubious, but she takes the hand anyway and lets John walk her to his car, and help her buckle her seatbelt when she forgets how, and they don’t talk much except for when she tells him her address so he can put it in his phone’s GPS.  
“I didn’t always live here,” Clarice admits soberly, the way only very intoxicated people can, “I only started living here when Mom found me.” John isn’t sure how to respond to that, and isn’t sure she meant to say it, so he pretends he didn’t hear it. Suddenly, Clarice starts at nothing, “Did you hear that?” she barks, “I swear I heard helicopters– I’ve got to hide under the cabinets!”  
John isn’t sure if Rohypnol induces paranoia, but he hedges a safe bet on ‘yes,’ and tries to do what he can, “Hey, you’re fine,” he murmurs, “nothing's out there, I won’t let anything happen to you.”  
They’re just over a mile from her house when Clarice snaps, randomly and with a dark edge to her voice, “That’s what you said last time.” What in the seven seas is she talking about? John doesn’t suppose he’ll ever know.  
Then they’re at her house and Clarice is, of course, half-asleep. He unbuckles her seatbelt and carries her to the front door, where he rings the doorbell with his elbow and waits, and rings again and waits, and rings again and waits, and then supposes that maybe nobody else is home and he goes inside and sets her on the couch in the living room to the left. For good measure, he wedges a pillow under her head, throws a blanket over the rest of her, and rolls her onto her side (that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Marcos said that’s what he learned in his first aid classes at that fancy nursing school).  
He feels bad leaving her there, but doesn’t suppose it would do anyone any good to be sitting in her house like a weirdo when her mom gets back from wherever she is at something-like-midnight.  
Just as he’s starting to reconsider though, just as he’s starting to turn around to sit with her until her mom got home– you know, to make sure she didn’t roll over and choke on her vomit or something– and to make sure her mom isn’t out of town for the weekend or something– just as he’s starting to think he’ll explain it all to her mom when she returns and take whatever bullshit that comes with that, there’s a gun at his back.  
As far as John knows, one of the parents has been awakened at a rude hour, come downstairs, found a disturbing scene that leaves a terrible first impression of John, and has taken some measures that they found appropriate. As far as John knows, they are about to ask him what the hell he was doing with their daughter, and he is about to explain to the best of his ability and leave when they ask him to. As far as John knows, there is not a very large probability he will actually be shot. John is wrong and foolish. In actuality, a shady agent from a shadier government organization has come into Clarice’s home through the door John left unlocked, and this agent has snuck up behind John and put a silenced gun to his back. In actuality, the agent hisses “Go home or get dead,” and John is stupid enough to listen. Of course, John still thinks this is one of Clarice’s parents speaking (although he still doesn’t know that her name is Clarice, just like she still doesn’t know his name is John).  
He puts his hands up placatingly and goes outside without looking at the figure that pushed him that way. He goes for his car, parked at the curb, and only then does he realize that there is a nondescript black van parked behind it. Only then does he realize the person behind the wheel watching him closely. Only then does he realize that slimy, snake-like voice was very likely not a half-asleep and overprotective parent. Only then does he take a very discreet photo of the license plate of the van with his phone and start to head back inside.  
But, this is a very professional shady government organization, and so they promptly tase John and put him in his car, then they move Clarice into their van while his uncooperative body watches, and then they tase him again for good measure and drive away.

It’s nearly ten the next morning when John blearily opens his eyes, and then shuts them against a headache that accompanies what he might– in another situation– assume was a hangover. But John isn’t an idiot, he knows what he saw last night, and he knows this isn’t a hangover any more than that person with the gun to his back last night was Clarice’s parent.  
Uncertain panic wiggles through John’s belly– he doesn’t have time to panic, but he feels he has the right to do so for at least a minute. He ends up multitasking: panicking and driving to the apartment he shares with Lorna (which, by extension, meant he practically shared it with Marcos too). He’s vaulting up the two flights of stairs and sprinting to their door and slamming it open and then nervously mumbling “What am I even supposed to do right now?”  
“About what?” Lorna speaks around a mouthful of cereal.  
Marcos is on the other side of the table– how did he not see them when he came in? “Did you forget a condom?” he asks. “Just get some Plan B from the pharmacy– it’s expensive, but it works.” Now that he’s sober, Marcos has that warm and exhausted fatherly vibe that is out of place in a house of three grown-ass adults.  
“I didn’t sleep with her,” John groans, “someone gave her Rohypnol, I drove her home.”  
“Yikes,” Lorna muttered.  
“And then she got kidnapped.” It’s a special talent of John’s to say things like this very matter-of-factly, like it’s a normal thing, even when he knows very well how abnormal it is. “And they tased me,” he adds, “twice.”  
If nobody noticed the kidnapping part, it must be catching up to them now because Lorna swallows hard and Marcos partially spits out his cereal and they both go “What!?”  
“Maybe lead with the kidnapping bit next time,” Lorna barks, trying to drink some water to drown the cereal she prematurely swallowed.  
Marcos is wiping up his spill at the edge of the table already, and he asks “What the hell happened?”  
More than anything, John wants to collapse into the third chair at the table, but he’s too busy bouncing on the balls of his feet to notice. “I dropped her off inside her house– there wasn’t anybody else home– and then someone had a gun at my back. I thought it was one of her parents, but then I got outside and they tased me. They tased me! And then they took her into a black van and they drove off. I woke up in my car in front of her house this morning.”  
“Okay,” Marcos says cautiously, “maybe leave this to her family?”  
“They’re out of town!” John cries. “Or, at least, there wasn’t anybody home at midnight last night or this morning.”  
Always the action-taker of the two, asks “Do you have anything to go off of?”  
“Got a picture of the van’s license plate,” John offers.  
Silence for a moment. Contemplative. Nervous. Nerve-wracking.  
“I can’t do anything with that,” Lorna tells him, “and neither can you or Marcos.” John’s heart sinks– sure, he doesn’t even know her name, but he can’t very well just stand by and let her be kidnapped. Grinning, Lorna finishes “But Sage can.” Sage! Of course. She is their resident nerdy computer friend– real name Tessa, but she mostly goes by her online alias of Sage. Her friends are comprised of the people in this room and her girlfriend, Jubilee, but if she likes you then she’ll hack into Air Force One and play your favorite song through their speakers (that’s not a joke, it’s what Lorna got for her birthday last year and it had been so funny).  
Sage lives a floor down, right below them. John is already whirling on his heels and taking the stairs down a floor, while his friends follow at a more leisurely pace.  
He knocks as a formality (she never opens the door: either you knew to just open it or you leave) and then bursts in and calls “Sage, I need your help tracking a license plate.”  
The girl pops up from under the kitchen table, where she’s made a blanket fort and has a laptop inside, with several monitors on display within the tiny screen. “Ooh, is this for the mysterious kidnapping victim you were talking about?” John nods– Sage insists on cameras in their apartment, and she says they’re for security but everyone living there knows they’re for eavesdropping, they don’t care anyway. In this case, they’re even helpful. “Let me see the picture,” there’s excitement, not anxiety, in her voice. John pulls up the photo and hands it to her, and she flies to the bedroom with a flourish, where her hands fly over computer keys for approximately six minutes straight, then she scrolls and scrolls, and she asks “Why don’t you just tell the police about all of this?” (which does give John a major pause for thought), and then click, and then Marcos and Lorna wander into the room, and then “Oh, nevermind about the police. The government kidnapped your girlfriend.”  
“She’s not, and– what do you mean ‘the government’?”  
As always, Sage is ten steps ahead of everyone else, and her fingers fly and her mouse scrolls, clicks, scrolls, as she sorts through gigabytes of data in seconds. “Technically, a research division of the EPA that calls itself Deep Sea Research for the Betterment of Mankind, or just “the Deep.” I mean, that’s what the guys in these emails are calling it,” she tells him didactically. “They have a warrant to search her house– although I’m not sure why a research division would need a warrant to search a house– or why they’d kidnap your girlfriend, for that matter.”  
“Wait,” Marcos interrupts, “Why would an environmental research agency need to kidnap people?”  
“Maybe she’s psychic,” Lorna offers with a shrug.  
Shaking his head, Marcos says “But to research the environment? I don’t think psychics play a huge part in ecosystems on planet Earth.”  
“It doesn’t matter why,” John finds himself whispering, “I’ve got to bring her back home.”  
There’s a pause in which John realizes everyone has heard him, and then Lorna puts her hand on his shoulder and whispers back “John, have you ever realized that you are on ride-or-die bitch?”  
Without blinking, John responds “Must be part of being a “Mother Hen.” The smirk that comes across in his voice does not show on his face, but that doesn’t stop Sage from cackling at him. “Hey, Sage, can you do me one more thing?” he asks.  
“After that last time I was in a mood and you forced me to take a shower?” she replies with a grin, “Name it.”  
“Tell me where “the Deep” is headquartered?” Sage starts doing her thing.  
Marcos puts his hand out in a clear stop, “Wait, you’re really doing this?” he cries.  
“Marcos,” Lorna starts.  
“You’re going to go after some girl you don’t know after she was taken by a government agency?” Marcos continues.  
“Honey,” Lorna interrupts.  
“What if they have guns? Or what if they arrest you? Those MMA classes only go so far, man–”  
“Babe,” Lorna shouts, and Marcos stops in his tracks and takes the hand she offers him.  
Meanwhile, Sage has ignored all of this to process John’s request. Click, click, scroooooll, fingers smashing on the keyboard, scroll, scroll, click. “It’s a small agency,” she says, “just one building registered to its purposes– they have wicked tight firewalls and all that jazz, I personally love them already.” She’s grinning, playing their security systems like a game, enjoying herself like she does when everyone gets together for Clue or Jenga (they don’t play cards anymore because Sage can and will cheat). “Oh, no offense to your girlfriend, John,” John doesn’t dignify that with a response anymore, “here’s the address. Have fun.” Still not looking away from the screen, Sage scribbles some words on a piece of paper and hands it to John.  
Murmuring a haphazard thanks, John’s already on his way back out, until Sage calls out, “Oh, wait, John!” he pauses, “Don’t die. I need somebody to bring my packages in.” She gives him the courtesy of turning around to grin at him, and even give him a thumbs up.  
“You know we can bring your packages in,” Lorna says, “right?”  
Sage shrugs, “Yeah, but I like it when John does it. He’s better at it.”  
He’s in the car, plugging the address into his phone, and driving away before Marcos, Lorna, or Sage think to consider whether or not he’ll need help.  
Lucky for him, the phone’s routing tells him he’ll be there before noon– or maybe that’s unlucky for him, he’s not sure. You see, he’s never really tried to recover a stolen person from a government organization, even a tiny, research-dedicated one. He supposes it can’t be much harder than trying to get his grandpa to take his medication on time, or dragging the dynamic duo of Marcos and Lorna out of a good party when they got shitfaced, or forcing his younger brother to get to school on time (in the years when that kid was still John’s responsibility). Yes, John tries to convince himself, this will go smoothly.  
He is lying to himself and he knows it.

Speaking of lying to yourself, Clarice is somewhere nearer the coast trying to convince herself that she won’t drown in the tank they dropped her into in the wee hours of the morning when she arrived at… wherever she is. It’s been hours, and the air is starting to get thin. Her skin is starting to pale, her eyes are starting to dilate, her body is starting to shake, her mind is starting to weaken, her heart refuses to waver.  
She’ll get out. She will. She survived a hurricane, and the accompanying flood, she can take shorter, shallower breaths for a few more hours. She hopes she has a few more hours.  
In distraction, Clarice surveys the room– after all, her tank is made entirely of glass, and it would be a shame to waste this precious alone time with thoughts of impending death. The tank itself is backed up against a wall and has nothing in it except Clarice and a few thousand gallons of water. There are computers on the right wall, an examination table on the left, and a row of ominous, empty chairs in front of the tank. Below is just the floor, and above is at least two stories of things Clarice can’t see through the grated walkways that line the walls. If there wasn’t this damned cap on top of the tank, and if Clarice could jump that high, she could rocket herself straight upward and onto the walkways, and just wander on out of here.  
Alas, however, there is a plastic lid on her fishbowl, and it’s locked into place somehow, and Clarice is stuck, and she is going to drown.  
Until then, however, she’ll just lie to herself that she will get out of here. She’ll get out of here and she’ll go home to her mom, to Nora, to the empty parties filled with blank faces, to the last face she remembers seeing– and what was his name again?

John is now realizing how underprepared he is. Yes, he got to the facility, but he’s not exactly dressed for sneaking around unless you count a red plaid flannel as camouflaging and jeans as optimal for stealth movement. Besides, how is he going to find her in there? It’s not a huge building, but he’s never even been inside it. However, he has a few things going for him: one, determination; two, optimism; and three, a really good poker face from all the Clue and the card games they don’t play anymore.  
Deciding on the best plan of action he has, John strolls through the front door confidently. It should be mentioned that John’s best plan of action is improvisation, so you, me, and him are pretty much all going to see how well this goes together.  
The elderly man at the tiny front desk doesn’t bat an eye as John strides through the aged lobby, just says “Back from lunch early? That’s a first.” John hums something noncommittal and hopes that the man doesn’t notice, he keeps walking until he sees a door marked “LAB” on his first left. A quick peek in shows this is void of prisoners, hostages, and captives alike– unless you count the purple beta fish.  
The next door marked “LAB” is also a bust, although what they’re doing to whatever kind of fish is strapped to the table is inhumane. So are the ones marked “CONFERENCE” and “DETENTION.” Other than bathrooms and janitor’s closets, there’s just one door left: “TANK.”  
Behind door number five is nothing but a control panel mounted to a grated floor that lines the walls, but doesn’t protrude any further than a narrow walkway, and beyond the control panel, the floor drops off. No railing or anything– isn’t that an OSHA violation? Thoughts like that draw John into the room, to the edge of the grated floor panel, and he looks down to see a huge room (okay, maybe not that huge, but compared to the other rooms in this building it’s big) and in the center he can see the floor below: chairs, another examination table, some computers, and a giant tank. Like the fish tank where he saw that purple betta fish, but about 1,000 times the size, and its occupant is a human being– a human being!?  
Now there’s more of that panic: the chick he came here to retrieve is trapped in a lidded fishbowl under his feet, and she’s probably drowned to death, or something close. He’s flying to the control panel, looking at all the buttons, pressing the green one labeled “Temp. Control,” and that just asks him to enter the preferred tank temperature, so he moves onto the other green one labeled “Water Flow Start/Stop,” and that one seems to be broken, so he tries the one that has a label, but you can’t read it because there’s tape over it reading “FEEDING ONLY.” That’s got to do something helpful.  
Turns out, that one opens the lid of the tank. Clarice’s head breaks water immediately, and she splutters and holds herself above the ledge at an angle where John can finally see why they would put a human being in a fish tank: she’s a fish. There’s a long tail, with a color that looks like someone made a chalk pastel out of wine, and fins that were clearly once smooth and sleek, but are now ravaged by scars and tears in a pale rose color. Her dark hair gets lighter as it meets the water as well, fading out to a color that’s closer to that of her tail. Her tail.  
“What is that!?” John exclaims.  
Clarice squints up at him like she’s considering the possibility of glasses because there’s no way her eyes aren’t mistaken right now. “What are you doing here!?” she cries back.  
“What do you mean ‘what am I doing here?’ I came to get you!”  
“No, I get that,” Clarice retorts, adding “I’d be more surprised if you were here for something else, I mean why are you here?”  
Now John’s getting a little embarrassed, “Oh, sorry should I not have come? Are you waiting for somebody else to pick you up from the government kidnapping?” There’s enough of a joke in there that he hopes the rest doesn’t come off as aggravated– he certainly isn’t trying to be aggravated.  
However, Clarice panics at that. “No! I mean, thank you,” she sputters, “but I literally met you once when I was tipsy at a party.”  
“And then I took you home after somebody drugged your drink, and then I got tased on your front lawn,” John finishes, before shaking his head and shouting “But what is that thing where your legs are supposed to be?”  
Pounding footsteps can be heard through the doorway John came in through. “I could sit here and explain to you that I’ve got a tail for legs when I touch saltwater, or you could just get me out of here and we both go home.” Clarice’s arms are shaking, and John is pretty sure that means she doesn’t have the strength to get out of there on her own.  
Two problems. One, “It doesn’t look like we have all the time in the world, company incoming,” and two, “Wait, I can’t swim. I really can’t swim, like, at all.”  
“Just jump down here,” Clarice tells him, “I’ll catch you, it’ll be fine.” With a dubious glare at her shaking arms, John hesitates. “Dude, we do not have the time for you to be scared of a little water, get your ass down here.”  
“You’ll catch me?”  
“I would literally never drop you.”  
That, combined with the boots that are practically stepping on his heels, is enough for John. He goes right up to the edge and jumps before he has time to hesitate.  
Air rushes past his ears, fills his lungs past carrying capacity, drags at his limbs and wills him to stay, stay, stay. Then he hits the water with a painful gasp that throws the air out of his body. No way to tell up from down. Nothing to hold onto, no leverage. Water drags at his limbs, forcing him to stay, stay, stay.  
Unexpectedly steadfast arms wrap around him, and he fights them– thinks they are a physical manifestation of the water trying to drown him– but they don’t let go. They haul him what could be up or down or sideways, but wherever it is, his head breaks the surface of the water and he’s gasping for air so at least there’s air to breathe.  
It’s a brief moment’s respite because a few seconds later he hears “There’s somebody else in the tank!” and gunfire begins to rain down in pistol-sized bursts. “No, no! Don’t shoot!” The gunfire stops, and these people, whoever they are, must have the aim of stormtroopers because there isn’t a scratch on John or Clarice when they’re done. But bullets have to go somewhere, and everyone figures out where when there’s a quiet cricckk and then a louder criiiick and then a deafening shatter of glass and water flooding into every corner of the lower room.  
On the optimistic side that Clarice was trying to focus on: this spooked the guards enough for them to lower their goddamn weapons. On the pessimistic side John was trying not to focus on: he and Clarice (although he doesn’t know her name is Clarice any more than she knows his name is John) are now wading in half a foot of water that’s gotten murky with the dirt on the floor and is riddled with glass. Oh, and Clarice’s tail is not obediently shifting into legs like the fairy tales suggested they would.  
“Can you stand?” John demands.  
“Does it look like I can stand!?” Clarice snaps. “It takes a while to get my land legs back,” her frustration is showing in the red in her ears and the tension in her shoulders and the fact that she is still just kind of sitting there like a fish on land– forgive how tongue-in-cheek that was.  
Groaning loudly, John throws Clarice over his shoulder like a slippery, sweater-clad, and soaking wet sack of scaly potatoes, and he runs for the door that used to be somewhat hidden by the tank that is now everywhere on the floor.  
“Where are we going!?” Clarice asks– and she sounds a little bit nonchalant, given the circumstances, certainly calmer than John. More… exasperated than panicked.  
At the other end of the spectrum, John screams “Wherever the guns aren’t!” and barrels through the door, up the only set of stairs, down a hallway– oh no, more gunshots there, turn around. Down the hallway in the other direction, turn, not that door, not that door, there were only, like three doors before where are these other ones coming from!!? But then they’re in the lobby, and Clarice’s legs are starting to look like legs trapped in some translucent purple Jell-O, as opposed to a goddamn tail, and John is thinking ‘okay, okay, I can handle this a bit now.’  
But, boy, was he wrong. Ten more agents– and these ones aren’t agents, these ones are local police officers who see Clarice’s legs and shout “What the f– ?” and “Sir, are we on Prank’d?” and “Carbon monoxide poisoning!” The first two things help only in such a capacity as they stop the officers from shooting John or Clarice, but the third sufficiently panics them enough that they scatter outside the building, and our two heroes (as much as you can call them that) use the chaos to exit the building and beeline for John’s car. He throws her into the passenger’s seat and then shoves himself into the driver’s seat and he starts the engine and drops his foot on the gas pedal like he has someplace to be yesterday.  
Several officers move like they’d like to get in their cruisers and make a highway chase out of all of this, but the old man who’d been sitting at the front desk waves them down before they even close their doors, and he takes to explaining things in a very meek way that seems to calm them down. Neither John or Clarice will ever know exactly what he said, but it must have been good because the police don’t ever pull them over, and their faces are never on wanted posters.  
The drive gets quiet when everyone’s done breathing the adrenaline out of their systems. It stays quiet for about ten minutes, in which the collective thoughts on everyone’s mind cycles between one of the following: I almost died, I almost drowned, and holy fucking shit John just figured out Clarice has a tail sometimes.  
But John is the one to ask “So, it’s not like the movies where you get out of the water and, poof, no more tail?” It’s the only question he really needs an answer to right now.  
A laugh erupts from Clarice– the kind that only comes out when Nora is being particularly hilarious or when her mom has trouble pronouncing extremely mundane English words like “tax benefits.” “No,” she responds, “it’s like when a cat unsheathes it’s claws,” that’s how her mom explained it anyway, “except there’s about 6,000 claws. My tail doesn’t just pop out when I hit the water either, it takes a few minutes.”  
“Got it,” John replies with mock normalcy, “mermaid problems.”  
It’s nearing three in the afternoon by then, and John’s cell phone rings out from where he left it in the center console of his car. It’s Lorna, and she’s got it on speaker.  
“Hey, guys,” John greets benignly.  
“Holy shit, you’re not dead!”  
“Is your girlfriend dead?”  
“Sage, rude. What if his girlfriend was dead?”  
“Is she though?”  
“She’s not my girlfriend and she’s not dead.”  
“Almost was. Not quite,” Clarice comments idly, ignoring the girlfriend comment because she has no clue what did or didn’t happen when she was drunk, outside the kidnapping and the meeting of this outstandingly weird boy, and she doesn’t want to find out.  
“She sounds pretty…”  
“Sage, you already have a girlfriend.”  
“Ju wouldn’t mind sharing. We already had that talk.”  
“You know what, Lorna, Sage, let’s go with they’re both alive and just settle for that.”  
“Oh, yeah, no, the police almost chased us,” John tells them, “but I think the receptionist handled that.”  
“You have a receptionist now?”  
“We should be home in, like an hour, but I can’t talk right now, I’m driving. Can I let you go?”  
“Not just yet,” it’s Lorna, and she sounds serious. “Put your new girlfriend on the phone.”  
John obediently hands the phone (which is still on speaker) to Clarice, just as a loud crunch sounds through the tinny speaker. Probably Sage, who ate potato chips like movie popcorn whenever people had conversations not involving her in her presence. For just a second, Clarice looks panicked, and John tries to convey a relaxed expression without taking his eyes off the road.  
“Hello?”  
“I just wanted to say that if you two do end up dating, I did introduce you.”  
“Did not!” John protests.  
“Then we didn’t hook up last night?” Clarice clarifies. “Thank Christ.”  
“Not for lack of opportunity,” Marcos explains, “he took you home and you were trying to climb him like a tree.”  
“No, she wasn’t,” John says, “you weren’t. And even if you were–” He doesn’t get to finish because Clarice is laughing hysterically– the light, bubbly laugh that she’s let out more in this post-kidnapping car ride than she has in the past two weeks combined. Maybe it’s the stress and she’s having a mental breakdown. That’s certainly what Clarice is telling herself right now. “You know what, let’s just take you straight to your house so you don’t have to deal with them,” suggests John with a tight and awkward smile.  
“Whaaaat! No fair.”  
“I’m with them, actually,” Clarice says, “they sound more fun than my house right now. Nobody’s going to be there until tomorrow afternoon.”  
Surrounded on all sides, John’s only option is surrender. “Fine, okay, but I’m hanging up the phone now,” and he doesn’t ask for permission to press the red button and end the call.  
“Where’s your family at?” John asks– light conversation, he supposes.  
“Mom took my little sister Nora to go look for survivors from the hurricane in Florida.”  
“Oh.” Not as light a conversation as he supposed. “That’s nice of them.”  
“Yeah, Mom goes every time there’s a hurricane or a flood on the East coast. It’s where she found me.” There’s that frustrated redness coming to Clarice’s ears that John is just getting more and more endeared by.  
“Wow, you survived a hurricane?” he whistles, low and impressed.  
“That’s why my tail’s all fucked up with scarring,” Clarice tells him.  
John can see it’s something she’s sensitive about. “That doesn’t mean it’s not literally the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says. And that’s not flattery. He doesn’t suspect anyone has seen anything cooler than a purple mermaid tail, regardless of scars.  
“What’s your name anyway?” Clarice asks sharply. “You just literally drove two hours and nearly drowned and got shot at and you were almost chased by the cops– all for my sake– and I don’t even know your name.”  
“John,” his response is accompanied by a winning smile.  
It certainly wins over Clarice, who follows with, “I’m Clarice. Nice to meet you. John.”  
"Nice to meet you too."


End file.
